A Highly Sensitive CMOS-MEMS Capacitive Tactile Sensor

Abstract

This paper describes the design and characterization of a capacitive tactile sensor fabricated in a conventional CMOS process. To achieve a high capacitive sensitivity, an oscillator circuit is adopted to convert the pressure induced capacitive change to an output frequency shift. The complete post micromachining steps are performed on a CMOS die without resorting to a wafer process. The pressure-sensing membrane has a total size of 200 µm × 200 µm with an initial sensing capacitance of 153 fF. Experimental results show an initial frequency output at 48.96 MHz under no applied load. The total frequency shift is 13.5 MHz with a corresponding membrane displacement of 0.56 µm and a capacitance change of 63 fF, averaging 0.21 MHz/fF. The measured force sensitivity is 26.1 kHz/µN.